A Police Union Criticizes Quinn Over an Ambulance Call
By THOMAS KAPLAN
A police union criticized Christine C. Quinn on Friday for her decision to call the police commissioner when an ambulance did not arrive promptly to tend to a young woman who had collapsed at a news conference in Brooklyn this week.
The union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, paid to run a full-page advertisement in The New York Post and The Daily News that accused Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a leading Democratic candidate for mayor, of using her position to seek special treatment.
The sergeants’ union, which has 13,000 members, is unhappy with Ms. Quinn over her support of a measure to create an inspector general for the Police Department. In the advertisement, the union tried to connect the ambulance episode to that issue; it suggested that the money to finance the new office could pay for new ambulances, and perhaps even “to purchase an extra ambulance to handle personal favors for Speaker Quinn.”
Fire officials said an ambulance did not respond with great swiftness because the call had been categorized — properly, they said — as less than an urgent priority. The president of the sergeants’ union, Edward D. Mullins, said Ms. Quinn showed hypocrisy by calling the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, instead of allowing the authorities to follow their standard procedures.
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/nyregion/a-police-union-criticizes-quinn-over-an-ambulance-call.html?_r=0